There is a particular sort of irony in being a storytelling professional who cannot fairly carry herself to inform her personal story. Marianne Olaleye, founder of brand name storytelling company JAIKU, has spent years serving to purchasers discover and articulate their narratives, operating workshops that 96% of individuals charge as helpful or very helpful, and advising founders and CMOs on tips on how to make their manufacturers memorable. And but, for 2 full years, she sat on her most bold concept with out performing on it.
“I purchased the web site area and deliberate out all the positioning for the Storytelling Summit again in December 2024,” she says. “However I used to be terrified as a result of I’ve such large desires for it, and all of it felt too daunting.”
A part of the concern stemmed from the size she envisioned. “I imagined my first summit being a full-day gathering with lots of of attendees, a number of talks and panels, workshops, breakout actions, model activations: the entire works,” she explains. However over time, she began to note that essentially the most impactful occasions she’d attended lately had had not more than 20 folks within the room.
“I advised myself, ‘simply make it exist first, the remaining will fall into place,'” she remembers. “This yr is our proof of idea: present it really works, get suggestions from the individuals who be a part of us and construct from there.”
Can tales save us?
The JAIKU Storytelling Summit runs on 17 September at Second Dwelling Spitalfields, London. It’ll host 60 folks from 9.30am to 11.30am, with audio system confirmed from Adobe, ustwo Video games, YouTube, Arcadis, Digital Voices and Cassava Republic Press.
The summit’s central query, “Can tales save us?”, is not a rhetorical provocation for its personal sake. Marianne quotes her favorite sociologist, Dr Tressie McMillan Cottom: “The one factor that has ever modified the world is a narrative.”
That is not, she admits, all the time an excellent factor. “Tales transfer economies, and within the fallacious arms, they’ve put questionable folks in positions of energy. However tales can solely save us if we’re keen to hunt them out past our personal bubble, hear views that problem us and be taught to disagree nicely. Particularly at a time when the world feels more and more fragmented and polarised.”
B Corp Workshop – Cornwall (Credit score: Toby Weller)
Marianne selected a summit format, she says, as a result of storytelling has all the time been a collective act. “From cave work to oral traditions and tales round a campfire, tales have all the time been a survival software rooted in dialogue. Storytelling depends on folks listening to one another and making sense of the world collectively. A summit can try this greater than a single article might.”
Her personal intuition for sudden studying formed the occasion’s construction from the beginning. “I’ve all the time realized greatest from sudden locations: small speak with an aged lady within the park, conversations with my hairdresser’s younger kids, the years I spent leaping between industries earlier than beginning JAIKU,” she says. “These experiences taught me that anybody can inform an important story about something, if you know the way to hear.”
The Gen Z obsession
If there’s one subject that will get Marianne genuinely animated, it is the session she’s titled From Griots to Influencers, exploring how tales journey throughout generations and what manufacturers miss once they fixate on youth. The panel options the co-founder of Cassava Republic Press, one in every of Africa’s main publishing homes, alongside voices from the creator economic system. It is a dialog she’s been having with purchasers throughout industries for the previous yr.
“I am undecided once we grew to become so obsessive about Gen Z, and why a lot of our tradition and so many manufacturers default to youth as the best,” she says. “Older generations have huge spending energy, but they’re nonetheless underrepresented in mainstream promoting, particularly exterior merchandise explicitly geared toward them.
“Many Western societies are obsessive about no matter is latest and coolest, however I do know many cool folks of their 70s, and I would like to see extra aunties, grandparents and uncles in promoting. We have seen the notorious TikTok ‘bus aunty’ Bemi Orojuogun in Burberry and Jacquemus campaigns, and we all know Gen X have extra spending energy than youthful audiences, so it is about time manufacturers included older generations of their advertising.”
Cockpit Workshop (Credit score: Ploy Chanidapa)
She’d like, she says, an “Aunties Pattern Report.” The session title itself reaches again additional than the influencer economic system: griots are West African oral historians, the unique group storytellers. “The messengers have modified over the centuries, however the storytelling ideas have not. What’s totally different is who will get a voice and who we select to platform.” The implication is that the majority manufacturers are making a foul alternative.
Do not area of interest down
Marianne’s personal path to founding JAIKU was the product of cross-industry wandering: the sort of oblique path she now actively advocates. “I spent a very long time stressing about whether or not JAIKU ought to ‘area of interest down’ and concentrate on one core {industry}, however I do not suppose niching down is one of the best ways to be taught and hold your thoughts sharp,” she says.
“The most effective factor concerning the vary of labor we do is precisely why this summit exists: bringing collectively sudden views and borrowing from different industries. Probably the most memorable model or advertising work is commonly shocking. When a model does one thing that is not typical for its class, that is often what reaches folks and sticks.”
That philosophy exhibits up immediately within the summit’s programme, significantly within the session pairing recreation designers with city planners. “Entrepreneurs spend a lot time speaking about world-building and immersive model activations, however we not often acknowledge that recreation designers and concrete planners have been doing precisely that for years,” she says. “They each inform tales folks can reside in, actually and figuratively.”
Cockpit Workshop (Credit score: Ploy Chanidapa)
Her method to JAIKU’s personal workshops displays the identical pondering. She caps them at 25 individuals and makes use of a format she calls Stay Advertising and marketing Ideation, the place two companies be a part of her one by one to have their model challenges labored by means of with enter from the room.
“A Michelin star Asian meals founder as soon as gave advertising recommendation to a compression sock firm,” she says. “That is the great thing about sudden views coming collectively: folks in utterly totally different industries discovering widespread floor, realising they will borrow ways from one another.”
Beginning small, pondering large
For now, the summit is saved intentionally lean: a Thursday morning so that everybody will be again at their desks by lunchtime, 60 folks, two hours. There are sensible causes too. “I’ve hosted night occasions, they usually get costly quick,” she says. “Morning occasions are less expensive to ship nicely, which is important as I am constructing one thing new from scratch and funding it solo.”
The longer ambition, although, is something however modest. “I do know JAIKU’s Storytelling Summit can develop into one thing on par with SXSW or CultureCon,” she says. “However I’ve to start out someplace. So I am maintaining it tight.”
Simply make it exist first. The remaining, she appears assured, will fall into place.
